Moldovan banks let residents hold ordinary accounts in leu, in euro, and often in dollars, all under the same client. Maib, the biggest domestic bank, sets this out in plain terms on its own site: an individual can open several accounts in national currency and in foreign currency. A lot of families use that option. Older ones especially.
That single fact changes the answer for a sender in London. If the money is arriving in leu, the picture looks like every other app-based transfer: pick the cheapest of Wise, Revolut, Paysend, TransferGo, and you are done. If the money is arriving in euro at a Moldovan bank, the answer flips, and most of the apps that look cheap on paper start losing you money in a second conversion. If the money is cash at a bank counter, you are in Western Union and MoneyGram territory, and the cheap apps are not even on the list.
Name where the money should arrive first. Then pick the tool.
Why so many families quietly prefer euro at their bank
The reason comes down to a specific memory from 2014.
In November 2014, three Moldovan banks (Banca de Economii, Banca Sociala, Unibank) had roughly a billion dollars stolen from them through a network of fake loans. That was around an eighth of the whole country's yearly output, gone in one go. The scandal has a name in Moldova: Frauda Miliardului, the billion-dollar fraud. The mastermind was sentenced to fifteen years in prison in absentia and fled abroad. The former prime minister of the time served nine years in a related conviction. The banks were wound up, and the whole country paid for it in inflation and a slower economy for years after.
A person who was thirty at the time is forty-two today. Anyone who lived through Frauda Miliardului as an adult saver learned a quiet lesson: keep some of the money you cannot afford to lose in something other than leu at a Moldovan bank. When the option to keep her salary in euro at the same bank came in, plenty of people took it. When their relatives abroad started sending money home, they asked for it in euro too.
If you are sending to a parent, an aunt, an older sibling in Chisinau, Balti, or Cahul, ask them which account they want the money in. The answer is often not the one you expect, and it changes which app is worth using.
Three places the money can arrive, and which tool fits each
If the family keeps a leu account at a Moldovan bank, this is the mainstream case, especially for younger recipients. Revolut, Paysend, and TransferGo are the app-side options that actually deliver leu to Moldova today. Any of them will do the job cleanly, and the cost gap between them on a £300 send is small.
Wise is the one that catches people out. As of October 2026, Wise from the UK still does not send leu at all; its own Moldova page says the leu route from the UK is not built yet. Instead, it offers a dollar transfer over the international bank system to a Moldovan bank, with a fee on top and intermediary bank charges a normal Wise user does not usually see. It is not the cheap Wise experience you expect. Remitly used to be on this list too, but as of October 2026 its UK calculator for Moldova pays out in euro at a cash pickup counter, not leu into a bank account.
If the family keeps a euro account at a Moldovan bank instead, this is where most guides go wrong. Send with an app that converts to leu on the way, and the family then converts back to euro at their bank, and you pay for both conversions. It is a real cost on a £300 send, not a rounding error.
The route to use is a direct euro transfer into the family's euro account. Since October 2025, Maib has been connected to the single euro payments system that European banks use, which means a euro payment from a UK bank to a Maib euro account now moves at close to eurozone speed and cost. Ask the family for their euro IBAN, then send in euro from your UK bank or from a service that supports a direct euro payment into Moldova without a leu leg in the middle.
Cash at a bank counter is still how a lot of older or rural families collect. It is not old-fashioned; it is what works when the recipient does not use an app, or lives an hour from the nearest branch. Western Union and MoneyGram both operate at Moldovan bank counters, in leu, in minutes, for a flat fee that is higher than the app options but is a fair price for the pickup service. Wise and Revolut do not offer cash pickup at all.
What £300 looks like on each option
These numbers were pulled on 12 October 2026. Every rate has a day next to it because rates move; do not treat these as this month's numbers if you are reading this later than this month.
- Real rate that day (the one you get if you search GBP to MDL on Google): £1 = 23.70 leu. On £300 that is 7,110 leu before any provider takes anything.
- Wise from the UK to Moldova: not a leu send, dollar-over-the-old-bank-system only. On a £300 sum the intermediary charges typically eat a chunk that a Wise sender is not used to seeing. Skip Wise for this direction, at least until they add leu.
- Paysend from the UK to Moldova: flat £1 fee, card to card, in leu. The rate on top is close to the real rate. On £300 you get around 7,000 leu after the fee, subject to the current markup Paysend applies.
- Revolut, Standard plan: leu send. Fast on the sending side, but the arrival in a leu bank account itself typically takes 3 to 5 business days on Revolut's own timings for a UK to Moldova bank IBAN. Revolut-to-Revolut from the UK to Moldova is not currently available on Revolut's own listing; if you want minutes on this app, the route is a card push to the recipient's Visa or Mastercard. Cost is comparable to Paysend on the exchange-rate side.
- TransferGo, standard: leu send, next business day. Fee around a pound, rate close to the real one. On the £300 baseline pulled for this piece, TransferGo arrived with the most leu of the four options that send leu today.
- Western Union or MoneyGram, cash pickup at a Moldovan bank counter: leu, minutes, higher fee (typically several pounds on £300), but this is the only way to deliver cash in leu. Remitly has added cash pickup at six Moldovan banks (Maib, Victoria Bank, Moldindconbank, FinComBank, Energbank, Comertbank) in the time since this piece was first written, but its UK route pays out in euro at the counter rather than leu, which is a different question from this one.
- For euro arriving at a Maib euro account: send in euro from your UK bank as an ordinary international payment, or use a specialist that supports GBP to EUR into Moldova without a leu leg. Ask the sending bank for the euro amount that will arrive and the total UK-side cost before you send; do not accept "no fee" as an answer without seeing the arriving amount.
The £300 baseline matches the number we use every week for the Friday number column, so if you have read one of those pieces the shape here should feel familiar. Verify these numbers for yourself on the day you send. Providers move their pricing, and the leu is not a fixed rate against the pound.
What changed after 2022
Until early 2022, a large share of the money coming into Moldova was from family members working in Russia. Roubles moved through Russian bank services and specialist cash pickup networks. Sanctions and the response to them cut through that route. By late 2024, the last of the Russian cash pickup services still operating between Russia and Moldova had been shut down by Moldovan banks. What replaced it was Italy, Germany, Romania, and the UK. Most Moldovan families who used to receive from Moscow now receive from a cousin in Milan or a sister in Manchester.
If that is your family, and you are the sister in Manchester picking up the sends your cousin in Russia used to make, that is a very recent change. The Moldova money picture on the app side is only about three years old in its current shape, and a lot of the guides online are still catching up to that.
A word on Transnistria
If your family is in Tiraspol, Bender, Ribnita, the banking picture is not the same. Transnistria runs its own small set of banks, mostly cut off from international payments; the Moldovan mainland apps and networks in this piece do not serve those addresses in the ordinary way. What people do in practice is have the money arrive at a mainland bank account or a mainland pickup counter, and the family member crosses to collect. That is the workaround, and it is imperfect. Ask, and do not assume the app that works for Chisinau works for Tiraspol.
Whether the family sees roughly 7,000 leu on the arriving line, or something noticeably smaller, depends on choices made in the UK before you tap send. Ask the family which account they want the money in, and in which currency, before you pick the app for it. On the day you send, check the real rate on Google against what the app is quoting you.
Corrections
- 2026-10-12: An earlier version of this page said that if the recipient has a Revolut account of their own, a Revolut-to-Revolut send from the UK to Moldova arrives in minutes. Revolut's own UK to Moldova page now carries a notice that peer-to-peer payments on this route are currently unavailable (the same notice is on Revolut's Ireland, Spain, Sweden, Estonia, Netherlands, Iceland and Australia pages for Moldova). The sentence has been rewritten: Revolut-to-Revolut from the UK to Moldova is not an option today, and the minutes case for Revolut on this route is a card push to the recipient's Visa or Mastercard.
- 2026-07-14: An earlier version of this page said a Revolut Standard leu send to Moldova was "same-day". Revolut's own UK to Moldova page states that a transfer to a bank account generally arrives within 3 to 5 business days; same-day only applies to Revolut-to-Revolut or a card push. The list entry has been rewritten to match the provider's own timings.
- 2026-07-14: An earlier version of this page said, of the 2014 Frauda Miliardului scandal, that "the main figure went to prison". The main figure, Ilan Șor, was sentenced to fifteen years in absentia in April 2023 and is a fugitive abroad. Former prime minister Vlad Filat served nine years in a related conviction. The paragraph has been rewritten to name both correctly.